UK seeking £50 billion infrastructure boost - report

Ministers are drawing up plans for a 50-billion-pound housing and road-building programme harnessing private sector money, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

The Sunday Times said the scheme would be the centrepiece of a growth strategy that the government will unveil alongside its autumn financial statement on November 29.

Spokesmen for the Treasury and the Department for Business, the two ministries working on the plans, declined comment.

With the euro zone debt crisis further clouding prospects for Britain's economy, chancellor George Osborne is under intense political pressure to find ways of spurring growth.

But he insists he will not deviate from his plans to cut Britain's swollen budget deficit, saying to do so would be to risk the country's hard-won credibility with the markets.

Osborne confirmed on Sunday the broad outlines of what the government was looking at, but did not give any figures.

There are huge amounts of money going into infrastructure across the United Kingdom, he told the BBC.

I fully accept we need to go further. We need to have more initiatives and more government plans to help stimulate housing, get homes being built, help construction, help with more infrastructure, help small business get credit, he said.

I accept all of that and we are going to announce plans for all those things in the coming weeks, he added.

Government sources said a key part of the government's growth review would be promoting investment in infrastructure but they would not confirm the 50 billion pound figure.